Pinterest Expert Reveals Secrets For Helping You Get More Repins & Followers

As a Pinterest expert & consultant one of the most frequently asked questions I hear is: “what pins should I be sharing?”

Even for businesses with ecommerce enabled websites with product images, they are often stuck on what other content to pin.

For service businesses many give up on Pinterest because they just don’t see how repinning (sharing others images) of others content will benefit their business. Most service businesses at best only have their blog posts to share and after that they’re stuck, not really knowing what to do next.

One of the golden rules in social media, especially as it relates to content is to make sure we create and share content our target audience is looking for. Information that will help them, inspire them and make their lives easier or better in some way.

Pinterest is built on that premise. That’s why my motto has always been “Pin with a caring heart”.

Unfortunately I continue to see business after business on Pinterest solely focused on themselves by creating boards exclusively dedicated to their products and services. They do not have any boards; I mean not even one board – nada – that appeals to a wider audience. This is a major mistake to be avoided at all costs, read on to see why.

Pinterest is not just a digital platform put there so you can create an online catalogue of your products and services to try and sell stuff.

It is about providing them with content around those items in a helpful, social way.

I tell people all the time to dig deep and figure out what their audience would love to share with their network of friends. People love to share great content. And if you’re audience is predominantly women you need to be on Pinterest. It’s a no brainer. Women love to share amazing finds. If you ever compliment a woman’s outfit you’ll most likely hear “…and I got it for 50% off!” Women brag about getting deals. According the stats below 51% of women like “to connect with people that have similar styles and interests”. This confirms that women love to share things they love.

Creating content is not a one size fits all deal. You’ve all heard the saying “content is king” but what does really mean? To me it’s creating the right content focused on helping your specific target audience at the right time. But guess what? Regardless of what your business actually sells there are more common and broader interests that the vast majority of women engage with most.

Pinterest recently posted on their blog about which categories receives the most engagement on each day of the week:

Friday: GIFs bring some comic relief to the end of the week with humor. Humor is one of the fastest growing categories on Pinterest and holds the top spot on Friday. More than 3 million humor Pins are saved each day. And, in the five months since the GIFs launch, more than 400,000 GIFs are Pinned everyday. Here are some of the most Pinned GIFs:

Key takeaway: Make sure you create board in the categories mentioned above and include a minimum of ten images.

Here’s a another study you need to consider. According to RJ metrics they revealed from a dataset of 50,000 random pinners and their pins that 92% of pins (images) are made by women on Pinterest. Here’s what they’re pinning:

20% Food and Drink category

12% DIY & Crafts

11% Home Decor

Key Takeaway: Create the top 5 boards as shown in the graph above. This is especially important when you are just starting on Pinterest. Creating these types of boards is like saying “hey we have the same interests as you”. It’s a starting point to engage with an audience that will hopefully turn into brand advocates once they get to know you better and trust you.

Do your best to create boards that are in keeping with your business. So for example if you’re a B2B company you might want to create a board called “Coffee + Tea Drinks” as your food and drink category board (even if you are not in the food and beverage business…hello) because we all know that those are the types of beverages that most business people and entrepreneurs drink to get their energy up. For your DIY & crafts board I would suggest you create a “Holiday DIY & Crafts” board which is more generic and pin images of upcoming holidays or events. For the home decor category I would create a “Home Office Decor” board because many business owners and entrepreneurs have a home office.

Now that we know what boards to create RJ Metrics reveals how women start pinning certain categories:

holiday categories in August

gardening start early December

Key Takeaway:

Start rearranging your boards 4 to 5 months before the next holiday. Trends & seasons will definitely get more eyes on your Pinterest page and get you more followers too.

Women plan early so you want to make sure that those boards are positioned somewhere in the top two rows of your Pinterest page to increase your chances of getting more followers and repins.

Summer is just around the corrner so take advantage of summer events and activities. Don’t forget to put summer in your board titles. For example I always change my “Holidays Drinks” board title to either “Summer Holiday Drinks” or “Winter Holiday Drinks”. Make sure you also change your cover board to reflect the current theme.

Empowering your boards with this seasonal merchandising strategy will help you not only stay current and appeal to the collective shopping mindset prevalent at the time, as a side effect you end up driving more traffic back to your website too.

In addition, according to http://www.10alike.com (formerly Pinerly) pins featuring trending topics (seasons) see a 94% increase in click-through-rates! Imagine that! 94% Right now – think about that.

With this kind of information, 94% more click thrus it is easy to see why making adjustments seasonally is important to help keep you “on trend” as much as possible. This means, making adjustments throughout the year. If you are prominently displaying Christmas recipes & stuff in May you have to ask yourself; is that really effective?

The more helpful you are the more followers you attract, which sends more traffic to your site, which in the end helps you make the more sales. Do you see the success formula?

Just think of it as indirect selling more than direct selling and that thought will keep you focused on helpfulness.

Timing is everything…

Now that we know what content to share let’s make sure you are sharing your content at the right time. Getting the exposure you deserve means pinning at the right time of the day. Based on the graph below you’ll see that women pin the same top 5 categories throughout the day between 10 am – 4pm and then it spikes again after 10pm. This makes sense because over 50% of women on Pinterest have children so if they are stay at home moms they’ll be active on Pinterest all day and they’ll be on Pinterest after the kids have gone to bed.

Listen Up! Common Mistake to Avoid:

We all love the easiest and quickest way to do things. But if you think that pinning a bunch of pictures is going to bring you more followers – it won’t. As a matter of fact it’s the opposite.

Pinners don’t want you clogging up their Pinterest feed (which means your followers don’t want to be bombarded by your images on any given day). If you do you run a great risk of losing followers.

You need to spread out your pins to give yourself more exposure. If you’re pinning all 10 images at 1pm versus pinning those 10 images every 30 minutes from 1 – 5:30 which approach do you think will get more pins? Not all 10 at once. I guarantee you 100% that a lot less people will see them.

In addition, you can have the greatest images but if you’re pinning when your target audience is not on Pinterest then all that hard work creating those pretty images won’t matter one bit. I use ViralTag’s scheduling tool and I love how it helps me pin when my target audience is on line so am not glued to my computer all day pinning for the accounts I manage.

If you can’t afford their “Brands & Agencies” plan then consider using GoPixel’s scheduling tool.

Your Turn

Do you have any additional tips to share? I’d love to hear from you so please comment below.

If this Pinterest account management business seems overwhelming for you and you feel like you are going around and around in circles with Pinterest and not getting anywhere please contact me to learn more about my Pinterest Marketing Course for Business. Chapter 1 is offered for free.